Evil Angel/Jules Jordan Piracy Case Goes to the Jury

Plaintiffs pass on judge's urging to settle privately

LOS ANGELES - Final arguments were heard Wednesday in the video piracy case which pits Evil Angel Video, Jules Jordan Video and their respective owners against Canadian businessman Alain Elmaleh, as well as corporations 144942 Canada, Inc., Kaytel Distribution, Leisure Time Canada, Inc. and Jacky's One Stop Distribution.

Evil Angel was represented by Allan Gelbard, while Jules Jordan Video and Jules himself (under his real name, of course) were represented by the team of Sean Macias and Gary Gorham. The defendants were represented by Michael Plotkin and Charles Coate.

The day began with the defense's final witness, Alain Elmaleh himself, after which Judge S. James Otero locked the courtroom – Room 880 of the Edward Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles – to deliver his charge to the jury. After the charge, with the jury absent from the courtroom, the judge once again urged the parties to settle their differences between themselves, rather than allow the jury to do it, noting that sometimes juries deliver verdicts that are not favorable to either side in the litigation.

But it was not to be. According to a knowledgeable source, negotiations had broken down sometime earlier, and both Evil Angel owner John Stagliano and former business associate Jules Jordan said that they were anxious to establish on the record that their works had been pirated.

The piracy, which Elmaleh claims to have had no part in, reportedly involves over 60 titles (though only about two-thirds of those were at issue in this proceeding), for a total of 70,000 individual units – and what piracy it was! Gelbard displayed a real DVD with package insert alongside its counterfeit, and except for the imprecise cutting of the "Evil Angel" logo at the top, the two were virtually identical to the naked eye. However, reportedly the printing on the DVDs themselves was inferior to the original, and the copies were recorded as DVD-5s rather than the originals' DVD-9, which means that some material was missing from the copies, and many of the copies' menu items didn't work.

After the luncheon recess, Gelbard was the first to take the podium, and his passion in describing the evidence, which had taken up the better part of the past two years of his working life, was clearly evident to all.